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Lengthening the steeping time didn’t really do much except make the rooibos taste stronger, unfortunately. No offense intended to the seller, but I think it was a good thing that this blend was discontinued; it’s rather sub-par in my opinion.

I’ve seen various people talk about agave nectar so the last time I was at the grocery store I bought a squeeze-bottle of it to try out. This tea seemed as good an opportunity as any really. The agave nectar dissolves much more quickly than honey and it has a neutral sweetness that doesn’t seem to colour the flavour of the tea. It eases the bitterness of this particular black tea pretty effectively, though I still prefer this tea with milk.

That’s the end of this sample aswell. Okay so the tea wasn’t rave-inducing, but it still made a nice difference from the Celyon/Assam/Yunnan black teas that I’m more familiar with. It makes me interested to sample other Nilgiri teas to see how they match up with this one.

I was expecting something a little more like orange-flavoured chai, but this tea is quite different. The cup I made might be on the strong side as I had a bit more tea than one cup needed, but not enough for two.

The scent is sort of a lemony-floral with only the faintest hint of spice and the tea was turned a vivid orangy-red shade when the steeping was done. It does have a distinctly tart, orange tang at the start of each sip, but it’s natural tasting and not hibiscus-derived (thankfully). The spices are very mild in my opinion and I have to look for them to find the cloves and cinnamon – not that this is necessarily a bad things either. After the orange flavour fades, my taste buds are taken over by a lemony flavour that I think is mixed with the flavour of cloves. It’s like this tea has two seperate and distinct parts.

The resteep (@ 5:15) is considerably less citrusy and the spices are a bit more noticable.

Not my favourite offering from 52Teas I’ve gotta admit. I’m not really sure exactly what is putting me off it, but I guess it’s just not to my tastes. Other people have commented saying that this tea is good iced, but unfortunately I don’t have any left to test that theory out. Ah well.

The end of another sample – I’d love to try more Rishi tea one day, thank you LENA for giving me this one. I got three solid steepings (@ 5min, 6min, 7:30 min) out of the last bit of leaves and they held their flavour well although I noticed that there was a floral note that became progressively more prominent each time I steeped.

This tea is much improved by adding milk to it in my opinion. It has a creamier feel and taste, and the sweetness has been enhanced by it. It also seems to give the tea more body and substance. I’ll up the tea’s rating by a few points I think.

I’ve discovered that this fruit tisane makes a really nice iced tea, especially when I sweetened it with a bit of honey. It almost tastes like some sort of tart-ish fruit juice.

The dry tea is an interesting-looking dark-green/grey colour shot through with silver. It has a scent sort of like hay with a bit of nuttiness. But wow does it ever change drastically when I add the water! The smell morphs into something that I can only liken to dried seaweed – some people have called it ‘fishy’ but it’s not really that – to me it smells like the nori used to wrap sushi.

The tea isn’t fishy either (thankfully) it does have a savory note to it that gives the tea more body – this isn’t a fresh, light, delicate-tasting green. It has a nutty quality to it and a sort of green sweetness aswell.

I’m not sure what I think of this tea – I don’t love it, but it’s isn’t gack-worthy either. I think I’d have to be in a particular mood to drink this tea – I don’t think it’ll become my go-to green or anything like that.

Woah, this tea has some serious pucker power – it basically tastes like slightly diluted lemon juice at first and then you get a viscous kick from the ginger that leaves a burning sensation in my throat. No subtleties in this blend!

Unless I was eating something sickly sweet this isn’t a tea that I’d actively seek out.

I decided to finish off my last little bit of Thai Chai in style – by making it traditional-style like I’ve been saying I will for months.

I used this recipe on the website www.chai-wallah.com

In a pot bring to the boil 1 cup milk and one cup water.
Add 2 tsp of the chai/tea mix to the boiling liquid.
Add 2 1/2 to 3 tsp of sugar or sweetener of choice.
Simmer for two minutes and strain through a fine tea strainer.

I used skim milk so technically it isn’t old-school chai – but then lemongrass and coconut aren’t your standard chai ingredients anyway. I used wildflower honey as a sweetener.

It’s a little bit messy and more time-consuming than just brewing it in a cup with hot water but the results were worth it. It tasted like I’d added pure coconut milk to the tea – it was just sweet enough and the coconut flavour in particular was really prominent. It was smooth and creamy-tasting without the slightest hint of astringency. I’m so going to have to try other chais this way.